Happy August!! This week with the Center for Disability Empowerment was slow and relaxing for me. I finally got feedback on the thank you email drafts I wrote for our sponsors, volunteers, and attendees of the event a few weeks ago, so I was able to send all of those out this week. That means everything with the event is officially wrapped up! Other than that, this week I have been working on updating and cleaning up the CDE’s contact lists. All of the CDE’s contact information for elected officials had not been fully updated for the last election cycle, so I researched and updated all of that. This was definitely not the most exciting thing I’ve done in my internship so far, but will hopefully be helpful for the CDE in the future. 

This week at the learning session, we heard Tracy Najera from UNICEF USA talk about her career path and children’s rights. It was interesting to hear how her career has taken her in so many directions, and I thought it was cool that throughout all of the different positions she has worked, they all have been focused on helping children and children’s rights. The UN’s list of children’s rights that we looked at was honestly a bit surprising to me. Some items on the list such as the right to rest, relaxation, and creative activities is not something I’ve really thought of as a right before, so this definitely challenged me to actually think more deeply about what I think human and children’s rights are. Human and children’s rights are very central to the mission of nonprofit work, and I think it’s an important framework to keep in mind while working at a nonprofit. Tracy Najera’s presentation definitely emphasized this for me, and I hope to remember it moving forward in my career.

Until next week, 

Rachael McCague